There are numerous contaminated hazardous waste sites throughout the United States of America and in other countries throughout the world which, if allowed to remain untreated, have the potential for creating long term odor and/or health problems. In recent years, these situations have begun to attract the attention of environmentalists and others, and both government and industry have begun to focus on the immediate problems and the potential future problems posed by such sites. In the United States, Congress has created the Superfund to defray the expenses for the clean-up of some of the more potentially hazardous of these sites.
Containment of such hazardous waste material, either on-site or off-site, does not eliminate the problem, but merely defers it or transfers it. However, it has now been proven that incineration of these hazardous materials can be used to effect thermal destruction of the hazardous organic components leaving generally inorganic residues in uncontaminated condition which can be returned to the excavation from which the contaminated soil was removed.
Although incineration generally is eminently feasible for cleanup of such contaminated soil, the operation must be carried out in the United States under conditions that will meet the strict standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) so that no significant amounts of hazardous, or potentially hazardous, inorganic components exit along with the stack gas and so that residue from such an incineration method is no longer hazardous so it can preferably be returned to the site of removal. Moreover, such incineration should be capable of operation with relatively high efficiencies so as to accomplish the decontamination of large amounts of contaminated soil in a reasonable period of time and under widely varying environmental conditions of high and low temperatures and varying moisture contents. Research efforts in this area have been continued in an effort to better achieve such objectives in a commercially feasible manner.